Probably for the purposes of showing that he wasn’t utterly useless, Russell conjured some ice and held it against his neck. Rose raised her eyebrows. Her billywig sting didn’t feel like it required ice at all. It was a little uncomfortable when she thought about it, but if she wasn’t thinking about it, it was easy to forget. Aside from the side effects, of course; Rose still felt a little lightheaded and might have been floating imperceptibly, but she could have been making that last bit up. She wasn’t a Healing Arts student, but she had seen Connor have allergic reactions to bee stings in a similar way. Bees were tiny and billywigs were not, so Rose suspected that billywig stings affected people more quickly than bees, since they presumably had more venom or whatever it was.

Connor wasn’t deathly allergic, but he also didn’t react as quickly as Russell had reacted. Not that Rose really cared about Russell, but she was pretty sure that if he died while partnering with her for Professor Bennett’s bizarre request, at least one of her friends would disapprove. Rose sighed and dropped the netted billywig on the nearest open surface. She walked over to Russell and removed his hand from his neck so she could look at the sting. Yeah, it looked like it was very uncomfortable.

“Here,” she said, keeping her hand on Russell’s arm in case he tried to move. Twirling her wand a little bit, she placed it just above the sting on Russell’s neck and said “Melliferum.” Sticky, golden honey trickled out of Rose’s wand and on to the sting. When she was satisfied with how much of the sticky stuff was on Russell, she removed her wand and looked at him skeptically. “That should help with the itching more than the ice will. Honey reduces inflammation and it also prevents the air from getting to the sting which is part of what makes it so itchy. Can you breathe?”

Painfully aware, now literally, that Professor Bennett had instructed them not to cause any harm to the bugs, Russell had to fight to keep his hands at his side. It was hard to fight the automatic... more